More potential questions

At first, researching in the archives can be confusing and you may not know where to start. Here you will be provided with some potential research questions which may get you thinking about an area that you could look further into.

Although these questions are often given time periods, they could also be applied to other eras of the railway’s history, but you have to make sure that you have enough material to support the period you want to study in the archive.

Questions

– How did The Swansea & Mumbles railway benefit tourism during the inter war years in Swansea and Mumbles?

– How did the operation of The Swansea & Mumbles railway compare to that of the railways in the rest of South Wales during the nineteenth century?

– How did the Mumbles railway help Swansea to develop as an industrial city in the nineteenth century?

– How significant was The Swansea & Mumbles Railway to Swansea as a society in the first half of the twentieth century?

– Why was the closure of The Swansea & Mumbles Railway such a controversial move when its operation ceased in 1960?

There were a lot of problems in the development of the railway, which can initially seem confusing but can actually be used to the historian’s advantage. You could look at the problems that it faced throughout the nineteenth century, between 1900-1939, the interwar years, or from the Second World War to its closure in 1960.